From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

An art film (also called an “art cinema”, “art movie”, or in the US, an "independent film" or “art house film”) is a typically a serious, noncommercial, independently made film that is aimed at a niche audience, rather than a mass audience. Film critics and film studies scholars typically define an “art film” using a “...canon of films and those formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films.” Art film producers usually present their films at specialty theatres (repertory cinemas, or in the US "arthouse cinemas") and film festivals.

The term "art film" is used in its loosest sense when the location of exhibition, the repertory theater or "arthouse cinema," is used to define which films are "art films." With this approach, a broad range of films, such as a 1960s Hitchcock movie, a 1970s experimental underground film, a 1980s European auteur film, and a 1990s US "Independent" film all fall under the rubric of "art film." In 2000, film theorist Robert Stam argued that “art film” was a film genre based on artistic status, in the same way that film genres can be based on aspects of films such as their budgets (blockbuster movies or B-movies) or their star performers (Fred Astaire movies).

The antecedents of art films included experimental films and theatrical cinema. Art films were influenced by films by Spanish avant-garde creators such as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (e.g., L'Age d'Or from 1930) and Jean Cocteau (e.g., The Blood of a Poet, also from 1930). Theatrical cinema antecedents include art film genre include D. W. Griffith's film Intolerance (1916) and Sergei Eisenstein's films.

In the 1920s, film societies began advocating the notion that films could be divided into an "...entertainment cinema directed towards a mass audience and a serious art cinema aimed at an intellectual audience". In England, Alfred Hitchcock and Ivor Montagu formed a Film Society and imported films that they thought were "artistic achievements," such as "Soviet films of dialectical montage, and the expressionist films of the Universum Film A. G. (UFA) studios in Germany." In the 1920s, French dadaist and surrealist artists in Paris such as Luis Buñuel, René Clair, and Jean Renoir began experimenting with short films. In the 1930s and 1940s, John Ford argued that Hollywood films could be divided into the "...artistic aspirations of literary adaptations like Sean O'Casey's The Informer (1935) and Eugene O'Neill's The Long Voyage Home (1940)", and the money-making "popular genre films" such as gangster thrillers.

William Siska argues that Italian neorealist films from the mid- to late-1940s, such as Open City (1945), Paisa (1946), and The Bicycle Thief can be deemed as another "conscious art film movement." In the late 1940s, the US public's perception that Italian neorealist films and other serious European fare were different from mainstream Hollywood films was reinforced by the development of "arthouse cinemas" in major US cities and college towns. After the Second World War, "...a growing segment of the American filmgoing public was wearying of mainstream Hollywood films," and they went to the newly-created art film theaters to see "...alternatives to the films playing in main-street movie palaces".
Films shown in these art cinemas included "... British, foreign-language, and independent American films, as well as documentaries and revivals of Hollywood classics." Films such as Rossellini's Open City and Mackendrick's Tight Little Island, The Bicycle Thief and The Red Shoes were shown to substantial US audiences.

Deviations from mainstream film norms

Film scholar David Bordwell outlined the academic definition of "art film" in a 1979 article entitled The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice, which contrasts art films against the mainstream films of classical Hollywood cinema. Mainstream Hollywood-style films use a clear narrative form to organize the film into a series of "...causally related events taking place in space and time," with every scene driving towards a goal. The plot for mainstream movies is driven by a well-defined protagonist, fleshed out with clear characters, and strengthened with "...question-and-answer logic, problem-solving routines, (and) deadline plot structures." The film is then tied together with fast pacing, musical soundtracks to cue the appropriate audience emotions, and tight, seamless editing. Mainstream films tend to use a small palette of familiar, generic images, plots, verbal expressions, and archetypal "stock" characters.

In contrast, Bordwell states that "...the art cinema motivates its narrative by two principles: realism and authorial expressivity." Art films deviate from the mainstream, "classical" norms of filmmaking in that they typically deal with more episodic narrative structures with a "...loosening of the chain of cause and effect". As well, art films often deal with an inner drama that takes place in a characters psyche, such as psychological issues dealing with individual identity, transgressive sexual or social issues, moral dilemmas, or personal crises. Mainstream films also deal with moral dilemmas or identity crises, but these issues are usually resolved by the end of the film. In art films, the dilemmas are probed and investigated in a pensive fashion, but usually without a clear resolution at the end of the movie. The protagonists in art films are often facing doubt, anomie or alienation, and the art film often depicts their internal dialogue of thoughts, dreams, and fantasies. In some art films, the director uses a depiction of absurd or seemingly meaningless actions to express a philosophical viewpoint such as existentialism.

The story in an art film often has a secondary role to character development and an exploration of ideas through lengthy sequences of dialogue. If an art film has a story, it is usually a drifting sequence of vaguely defined or ambiguous episodes. There may be unexplained gaps in the film, deliberately unclear sequences, or extraneous sequences that are not related to previous scenes, which force the viewer to subjectively make their own interpret of the film's message. Art films often "...bear the marks of a distinctive visual style" and authorial approach of the director. An art cinema films often refuse to provide a "...readily answered conclusion," instead putting the audience member the task of thinking about "...how is the story being told? Why tell the story in this way?"

Production and distribution

Since art films are aimed at small niche market audiences, they can rarely get the financial backing which will permit large production budgets. Art film producers with small budgets cannot make films with lavish production values, expensive special effects, costly celebrity actors, and huge advertising campaigns, as are used in widely-released mainstream blockbuster films. However, art films make up for these constraints by creating a different type of film; art films often use lesser-known film actors (or even amateur actors) and modest sets to create a loose montage of pensive, reflective dialogue sequences. For promotion, art films rely on the publicity generated from film critics' reviews, discussion of their film by arts columnists, commentators, and bloggers, and "word-of-mouth" promotion by audience members.

Timeline of notable films with "art film" qualities

The following list is a small, partial sample of films with "art film" qualities, compiled to give a general sense of what directors and films are considered to have "art film" characteristics. The films in this list demonstrate one or more of the characteristics of art films: a serious, noncommercial, or independently made film that is not aimed at a mass audience. Some of the films on this list are also considered to be "auteur" films, independent films, or experimental films.

Some films in this list have most of these characteristics; other films are commercially-made films produced by mainstream studios that nevertheless bear the hallmarks of a director's "auteur" style, or which have an experimental character. The films in this list are notable either because they won major awards or critical praise from influential film critics or because they introduced an innovative narrative or filmmaking technique (e.g., Rashomon shows the same events as witnessed by four different people).

1960s

Breathless (1960) a French film by director Jean-Luc Godard about a young thug who shoots a policeman. The film used innovative visual and editing techniques such as jump cuts and hand-held camera work.

La Jetée (1962), a 28-minute science fiction film by Chris Marker about a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. The film is composed almost entirely of still photographs save for a single and almost unnoticeable moving shot of a person breathing.

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), a French film by director Robert Bresson about the life and death of a donkey. It is notable for its religious imagery, spiritual allegories, and naturalistic, minimalist style.

Belle de Jour (1967), a French film by director Luis Buñuel about a young, beautiful Paris housewife whose masochistic fantasies about floggings and bondage become reality when she begins secretly working at a high-class brothel.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick, which deals with themes of human evolution and technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life. The film is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering use of special effects, and visual imagery.

The Cow (1969) a Persian film by director Dariush Mehrjui about a man who becomes insane after the death of his beloved cow. The new wave of Iranian cinema emerged after this film.

Taxi Driver (1976), an American film drama directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader, is about an alienated young taxi driver who becomes obsessed with using violence to stop what he sees as the moral decay of society.

Waking Life (2001), a digitally rotoscoped and animated film directed by Richard Linklater about a young man stuck in a dream.

Memento (2001), a psychological thriller directed by Christopher Nolan about murder at the hands of a man suffering from long-term memory loss--hence the plot is reveal backwards and in ten-minute chunks

Pan's Labyrinth (2006), a fantasy/war film directed by Guillermo del Toro about a girl of modest nobility who discovers a magical labyrinth behind the mansion in which she hides during the Spanish civil war.

The Science of Sleep (2006), a fantasy film, written and directed by Michel Gondry, along the lines of Waking Life.'

Imagination (2007), a fantasy film about "twin girls who overcome physical limitations to learn the secrets of heaven and nature", written and directed by Eric Leiser.

Related concepts

Art television

A genre or style of "art television" has been identified, which shares some of the same traits of art films. Television shows such as David Lynch's Twin Peaks series and BBC's The Singing Detective also have "...a loosening of causality, a greater emphasis on psychological or anecdotal realism, violations of classical clarity of space and time, explicit authorial comment, and ambiguity." Other television shows that have been called "art television," such as The Simpsons, use a "...flurry of cultural references, intentionally inconsistent characterization, and considerable self-reflexivity about television conventions and the status of the programme as a television show."